I mentioned in my last post that I'd been praying the Liturgy of the Hours for a while. Anyone else interested in starting? Here's some background and how I did it.
The LOH is the daily prayer of the Church. Lots of people, including almost all priests and religious, pray some or all of the hours every day. Ever heard of "Matins," "Lauds," and "Vespers?" These are some of the Hours, or "Offices." (Think of Frere Jacques: Sonnez les matines is a command to ring the bells for the Matins prayer.) There's a table here explaining which is which and giving a little background.
Morning Prayer takes me maybe fifteen minutes, including the Invitatory (which is always prayed before the first office of the day). Here's the basic outline. All is to be read or sung aloud:
- Introductory prayer.
- The invitatory psalm, always Psalm 95.
- Sing a hymn (a suggestion is provided).
- Psalmody in three parts: usually a psalm, a canticle (that is, a Scripture reading that is song-like), and another psalm.
- A three-line "responsory" taken from Scripture.
- Another reading, this one more prosaic, from Scripture, often from an epistle, followed by a short period of silent reflection.
- The "Canticle of Zechariah" is always read (Lk 1:68-79)
- A series of petitionary prayers, ending with the Our Father.
- A concluding prayer.
The whole thing is entirely prescribed in the breviary, although you are free to add your own petitions. This is especially nice in times of spiritual dryness, because the universal prayers of the Church spilling forth from our parched lips still are spoken, are given power by our assent, are still heard and still unite us to the divine will.
Back in engineering school, we were allowed to use our textbooks during examinations. The sweaty silence of midterms was set to a backdrop of constant, nearly-frantic rustling of pages: page by page back to find the appropriate equation, turn a sheaf of pages forward to the appendix of steam tables to search for enthalpy of water at such-and-such a temperature, then back to the inside front cover where we'd penciled in a list of useful constants... By the final exam our textbooks were hairy with Post-It tape flags and handmade index tabs to put the information we needed at our fingertips.
A peculiar nostalgia for those years sometimes returns to me when I pick up my breviary. On feast days and solemnities, and outside Ordinary Time, certain of the prayers and readings are replaced with special ones from particular sections of the breviary. One finds oneself looking up today's date to see if it's a feast day, finding that day's saint in the back of the breviary, paging back to the psalms of Sunday, Week I but keeping a thumb in the Proper of Seasons in order to read the proper antiphons, going to the section called "Ordinary" to read first Psalm 95 and then later the Canticle. Fortunately, the thing comes with attached ribbon bookmarks. (Also, my breviary is stuck all over with Post-It repositionable index tabs, and I've penciled a few reminders in the inside front cover.)
OK, so how to get started? First, buy a breviary. You have three basic choices: Big (four volumes), Medium (one volume), and Short (travel-size, abridged). I recommend the one-volume (medium) breviary for beginners. The one I use is this one (I think --- mine looks a little different, but it's the same publisher.)
You might be able to figure it all out with the breviary alone, in combination with Internet resources or maybe with help from someone else who also prays the Hours. But there is another resource, one that really helped me despite my initial misgivings.
Let me say this clearly: The Divine Office for Dodos is in bad need of a good editor. But let me say it gently, too, because I am in great debt to Madeline Pecora Nugent, its author. It is the only guide to the Divine Office that I have found. She gives you everything you need, in very tiny little baby steps, to understand how the whole thing works and get into the rhythm of the Hours. I really wish that someone at, say, Ignatius Press or TAN Books (or the ...For Dummies people) would pick up this book, mark it all up, repackage it and reissue it, because it could be a very, very good guide if it were properly edited.
My point: Don't let Nugent's writing style keep you from extracting the useful information and tips out of her book. Take a look at the Amazon reviews: everyone criticized her style and humor but she still got five stars. (Oh, and don't bother sending the clip-out coupon away for the Bouncing Bookmarks and Restful Ribbons. Instead, invest in some of these.)
Even though Morning and Evening Prayer are supposedly the crucial Offices for someone who can only pray a couple of them, the next one I'd like to try to add to my life is the Office of Readings. This one includes, along with the psalms, two lengthy readings, one from Scripture, one taken from the writings of Church fathers or theologians or saints. My one-volume breviary only has an abridged Office of Readings, just a couple of dozen different ones. If I manage to incorporate the Office of Readings into my regular life, to the point where I have to start repeating myself, I'm going to reward myself. I'm thinking: a brand-new four-volume breviary with a different reading for each day of the year.
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